@ the person who said Machete wouldn't have a cutie mark, I definitely see where you're coming from, but I disagree! Machete, against all the odds of his birth and existence, survived and excelled. His determination to continue would have earned him his mark.
In g4, at least, they're more than just a representation of a task you're good at. It's a reminder of who you are as a person, of a truth you hold.
I think Machete might have a fang or claw, a representation of the phrases 'with gritted teeth' or 'clawing your way up' or maybe a hoof reaching toward the sun
I also think a mark like that would seem strange and off-putting, and may have been a source of strife for him while in school. In MLP, it's not terribly uncommon for ponies with no cutie mark or a cutie mark they're ashamed of to cover it up with clothing, in the way canon Machete wears his outfit.
Idk just my two cents
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Okay so. The biggest Marxist party in France is trotskyist and if it's not too much trouble, I would really like a rundown of why every ML I've talked to hates trots? Because there aren't many other options to be honest
basically it is because every trotskyist party is an anti-solidarity dead weight on the socialist left. they're almost inevitably hypersectarian and stuffed to the brim with grifters, opportunists, and careerists. they have absolutely no shame and see everything as a branding excercise and as an opportunity for sectarian digs and relitigating arguments from thirty, forty, fifty years ago. they often take soft-imperialist positions, both-sidesing nato imperialism and scoffing at the idea of critical support.
they also habitually turn into cults of personality that close ranks around sexual predators, but that's not endemic to trotsykist parties, that also happens with demsocs and MLs and maoists and anarchists and [checks notes] uh oh all the liberal bourgeois and right-wing political parties too.
i don't have a particular hypothesis for why trots are so uniquely fucking obnoxious, but i theorize that like--from the 70s onward, most western countries had an ML and a trotskyist org engaged in pointless sectarian warfare as the former toed the CPSU line and the latter railed against them, both to the exclusion of actually doing anything useful. after the dissolution of the USSR, the ML parties more or less collapsed or went entirely directionless for a long time. as a result, trotskyists have been spending three decades in parties that have no particular goal or point, and as such have completely ossified, bureaucratized, and become terminally infested with grifters.
i obviously don't know the french political context, so i can only describe my experience: my ML org has worked happily side by side with anarchists and democratic socialists--we have never been able to work with trots.
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I find something really interesting about Deltarune, and I want to talk about it.
YOU are canon to Deltarune.
Everything in real life that has ever happened is canon to Deltarune.
You are not playing as the Player, you ARE the Player. And not in an "oh, I need to imagine I'm involved in this for the game to make sense!" way, but in a literal, by the act of playing, you are the Player way.
And that's what kind of makes the game so real- When, instead of playing as a figure, you are the figure, through and through and without having to do anything, it kind of ropes you in, and brings itself out of the realm of fiction while it's at it.
Yes, the game is fiction, and yes, nothing in it is really happening, and the code is written. But when you're a part of the narrative, it becomes very easy to forget that, and so there's very few leaps in logic you need to take in order to make it feel real.
Kris is a video game character, both in reality and in canon. The game isn't fiction, it's reality. In the lore of Deltarune, Deltarune is a video game that you are playing. The exact same is true in reality.
This also leads to something many of us, including me, are guilty of- separating the Player and ourselves. Every instance of Deltarune that has ever been played has a different Player character, because it's a different person. But that gets confusing, so we refer to ourselves, and after time, them, as the Player. As time goes on, it's very easy to feel like your actions aren't your actions, but the Player's, and you're just moving the story along. Even if you haven't done Snowgrave, you can claim that the Player did snowgrave, because plenty of Players did snowgrave. But you didn't, and as such, it's not canon for your Deltarune.
We cannot characterize the Player. We cannot give them a personality seperate from our own. They are you, and you are them. Your actions are your own, and no matter what COULD happen, it doesn't until you make it. The Player is only malicious if you are malicious. The Player is sympathetic if you are sympathetic. If you don't want Kris to suffer, then the Player doesn't want Kris to suffer, and you're not a bad person. Your love is canon.
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30 Torchwood Questions!
Can be used as an ask game, or as a 30 Days of Torchwood challenge! I’m doing the latter (more on that later) and created this for that purpose, but then I realized it would work as an ask game as well, so here you go!
Gwen bashers DNI!!! Everybody else, enjoy!
1. How did you first get into Torchwood?
2. Who’s your favorite Torchwood member? (And if it’s not one of them, who’s your favorite character?) Why are they your favorite? Do you have any secondary favorites (maybe a one-off or minor character that really stuck with you)?
3. What’s your favorite episode(s)?
4. What’s your least favorite episode(s)?
5. What do you think, objectively, is the best episode of the show?
6. Favorite season/series?
7. Do you have any all-time favorite scenes? You can bring up multiple - a well-written scene, a silly scene that makes you smile, a sad scene that makes you cry, maybe a scene that just sort of stuck with you… your choice!
8. Are there any scenes (or even full episodes) that you can’t stand? If yes, and you could go back in time and rewrite them, how would you fix them?
9. Are there any characters you dislike? Do you legitimately hate them, or do they just kind of irritate you? What would it take to make you like them?
10. Do you have a favorite cast member? If you’ve gotten into the behind the scenes end of the show at all, do you have a favorite cast moment or story (from bloopers, TW Declassified, convention panels, etc)?
11. Do you have a favorite track from the score? Maybe the soundtrack?
12. Favorite location in the Hub?
13. Favorite ship(s)? Any Torchwood OTPs? Go ahead, gush about them!
14. Favorite friendship(s)?
15. Are there any ships you dislike?
16. Have you read Torchwood fic? If so, any all-time favorites?
17. Favorite kiss in the show? What was so special about it? If kisses don’t do it for you, were there any other scenes that stood out as particularly sexy and/or romantic?
18. Who would you say had the best character development? Who do you wish got more?
19. Would you recommend the show to people? If you would, would you feel the need to include disclaimers in your pitch? Any particular scenes you’d want to warn them about first?
20. Discuss Jack. Opinions? Favorite moment? Least favorite moment? Any unpopular opinions? Any fun headcanons?
21. Discuss Gwen. Opinions? Favorite moment? Least favorite moment? Any unpopular opinions? Any fun headcanons?
22. Discuss Owen. Opinions? Favorite moment? Least favorite moment? Any unpopular opinions? Any fun headcanons?
23. Discuss Tosh. Opinions? Favorite moment? Least favorite moment? Any unpopular opinions? Any fun headcanons?
24. Discuss Ianto. Opinions? Favorite moment? Least favorite moment? Any unpopular opinions? Any fun headcanons?
25. Now that we know how you feel; shag, marry, cliff / fuck, marry, kill the team! (If you feel comfortable doing so, of course.)
26. Do you have a favorite antagonist?
27. This is a sci-fi show, after all… any favorite aliens? Favorite gadgets, maybe?
28. Do you like how tragic Torchwood is, or do you wish it was more light-hearted? Do you think the ‘dark and adult themes’ were explored sufficiently?
29. Do you have a favorite quote? Serious or silly, or both! Maybe a favorite quip / exchange?
30. Why, overall, do you love Torchwood?
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i've developed some interesting methods of handling having a relationship with my mother who made my childhood/teen years misery and committed more than a little abuse.
as an adult, we have a very different dynamic, her daughters (sister and i) have confronted her with a lot of her bullshit and the things she both did and enabled. for some she has been sorrowful and even sometimes apologetic. she's a better mother to me now than she ever was when i most needed one. so i'll never actually trust her again, and she'll never be much deeper than surface level in my life, but we have something mostly good now, and on my terms.
however, she is very definitely one of those "i don't remember it that way" and "i did the best i could" mothers in a lot of areas, and has also always been the type to (probably unconsciously) emotionally manipulate the people she's hurt into catering to her hurt feelings about it instead.
over the years i've learned to get really comfortable with just not indulging it.
is she having a bad day, seems sad and upset? i'll give her a hug, try to make her laugh. if she throws broad hints it's a surge of hurt feelings about having driven one of her children to cut her off? well i'm just gonna stand there and not acknowledge or entertain it.
"well, apparently i was a bad mother" or shit like that? i'm just gonna look at her for a second, and i might either shrug or even nod, but i'm not saying a damn thing. i'm not awkwardly, uncomfortably, painfully contorting to her guilt trip nonsense. i'm not apologizing or trying to soothe her or reassure her or minimize it.
like, yeah. you really were. you know it, glad to hear it. we've definitely had that talk.
best kindness, most generosity i can offer her in times like that is not maintaining eye contact to bluntly tell her "yeah, you were." she can go ahead and feel bad about it.
it's not on me to make her feel less bad. she should feel bad. and i am definitely not someone she gets to seek comfort from about it.
hopefully someday she'll inch past just "poor me, i'm so sad and angsty about it" towards, like, examining the whys and acknowledging what she actually did wrong and work actively to be be better. in a few places, some of that has happened.
but that's her work. her job and responsibility. she can do that shit on her own time.
i say all this to offer a shoulder of solidarity to others like me. if you maintain a complicated relationship as an adult with the parent who hurt you and did you wrong as a child, that is okay. you get to choose how and if to thread that needle.
but you don't have to accommodate emotional manipulation and guilt trip garbage. stonewall it. walk away if you need to. don't apologize. don't try to make it better. that's not on you and it doesn't have to be. it's okay.
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